1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical connector, and more particularly to an electrical connector for surface mounting on a printed circuit board.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, a conventional electrical connector for electrically connecting a chipset to a printed circuit board (PCB) is attached to the PCB by soldering terminals thereof to the PCB via Surface Mounting Technology (SMT). Before the electrical connector is attached to the PCB, solder tails of the terminals should be adjusted to perform a wonderful coplanarity so as to ensure that each of the terminals can be reliably soldered to the PCB.
CN. Pat. No. 200320103928.X discloses an electrical connector including a housing with a pair of cantilevered side walls in opposite ends of the housing, a plurality of terminals loaded in the housing and a pair of metallic latches assembled to the housing. Each said latch has a body, which assembled to the side wall, a securing arm downwardly extending from a distal end of the body, a mounting portion formed near a downmost distal end of the securing arm, and a flexing portion joining the securing arm and the mounting portion. The mounting portion includes two slips respectively positioned at frontside and rearside of the flexing portion. There is a cutout defined between the flexing portion and each of the slips. Since the mounting portion is soldered onto the PCB by SMT together with the solder tails of the terminals, it is required that the tails of the terminals and the mounting portion of the latch perform a good coplanarity, or else neither facility nor reliability of soldering operation can't be ensured. However, since the terminals and the latch are formed from different metal sheets and are assembled on the housing separately, it is difficult to ensure a wonderful coplanarity between said tails and said mounting portion. Thus the latches should adjust the position of a solder surface of the mounting portions thereof for gaining a coplanarity with the tails of the terminals. Therefore, the flexing portion should be compressed if the securing arm is too long to perform a coplanarity with the tails of the terminals, or should be drawn out if the securing arm is too short to perform a coplanarity with the tails of the terminals. However, such compression or drawing operation may causes the mounting portion to slant from the PCB, as a result of which the connecting area between the mounting portion and the PCB is reduced and the capability of connecting is weakened. Moreover, the solder tails of terminals are apt to be twisted by an unintentional and improper operation during adjusting of the latches so that some tails of the terminals may be deformed to destroy the coplanarity. Furtheremore, to adjust the mounting portion coplanarity with the solder tails of the terminals after the adjusting of the coplanarity between the tails increases an additional procedure.
Therefore, an improved electrical connector is desired to overcome the disadvantages of the prior arts.